Don't confuse that 40th anniversary with the founding of the party itself, Texas' contribution to notions of Mexican American political self-determination. That founding happened about two years earlier in Crystal City.

The convention simply was an attempt to capitalize on early successes in South Texas and to take self-determination national.

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Forty years later, the pursuit Gutiérrez spoke of continues, as in Mexican Americans/Chicanos not yet having arrived statewide or nationally commensurate with their numbers. And, apparently, “respectable” is still in the eye of the beholder as there seems to be plenty of push-back as this population tries to get a few more fingers on the reins of representative government. Voter ID and redistricting anyone?

Beginning Thursday, events in El Paso will commemorate that first national convention, which also occurred there. The commemoration — at the Tomás Rivera Conference at University of Texas at El Paso — will include panels and exhibits. It ends Sunday. It's sponsored by the UTEP Chicano Studies program.

There were power struggles, folks falling out and contention over platform stances. You know, sort of like what happens at Republican and Democratic national conventions, minus the forming of a third party.

And there was some hesitancy with a third-party route altogether. For instance, according to Juárez, farm worker leader César Chávez balked at joining, though he spoke at the convention and rendered other help.

Women were there at the beginning, among them longtime activist Martha Cotera. She, her husband and daughter were there in Crystal City and there at the convention.

First is a model for how a party can focus on the “value of society working together.”

“You can't have a future in which it's every man, woman and child for themselves,” she said.

And then she speaks of the party's “legacy children” — children of La Raza Unida supporters who are now active in the betterment of the Mexican American and Latino communities.

Her daughter, Maria Eugenia Cotera, was 8 years old at that first El Paso convention. Now, she's an associate professor at the University of Michigan. She and other La Raza progeny will be participating in the commemoration this week.

Also among these legacy children: San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and brother, Joaquín, sons of Rosie Castro, who was also there at the beginning of La Raza Unida. Joaquín Castro is a state House rep and a congressional candidate.

Of those beginnings, Gutiérrez, now an attorney and a professor at UT-Arlington, said that there were obvious difficulties in forming and sustaining a party: “It's one thing to be a movement, another to be a political party.”

Today, the emphasis is about working within the two-party system, both parties vying for Latinos.

And this reflects what is perhaps the most important legacy of La Raza Unida: You won't be heeded if you don't stand up for yourself. For your community.